About eight

Stalled
Seven tall
Into the set of sun

Stopped
Then dropped
This war my course has run

No one knows
These words I shout
No one understands

Always doubt
My words about
And no one gives a damn

So let me set it straight
Nothing clever, wait
Pray let me hesitate

Simply a celebration
Rows of poppies
In a wild garden

About eight in the evening
A setting sun
In the first few days of summer

A photograph
You smile, we laugh
The light catches all our crinkles

We’ve sprinkled magic dust
On our generations rust
Just in time to mingle, single & free




The pamphlet Rainbows on my Spectacles is available at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/rainbows-on-my-spectacles/id486905289?mt=11

There goes her shadow

Would that I would want you
Blood being thicker, sicklier than water
Stood there under the moon
Should so soon my lady heirloom
There have seen the bloom

She stands in the empty church
In the cold and open doorway
She sings her songs in silence
Of all who’ve passed her way

Passed her
On into the darkness
Passed on, to her
Imprints on the headstones

Passed into streams of trickled water
To doubt and fear of childless daughters
Their virgin folds stay untold; they kept
Apart more than just two families

Motherhood never to be discovered
Never to be smothered
With the love
That only a child can give

Epilepsy now nowhere near the madness
Sad that then so misunderstood, much the same
When came the manic depression
Suppressed, repossession brought the only clue

Now stand
Here in the, feel
There blows the breeze
Now stand
Here in the, listen
There goes her shadow
Now stand
Here in the...

O would that you would want me
To be misunderstood, your
Bloodlines being sicklier
And ever thicker than water


The pamphlet Rainbows on my Spectacles is available at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/rainbows-on-my-spectacles/id486905289?mt=11

Make the man

Striped deckchairs
Chiffon dress
Heads in books
A softer breeze

Beds with plumped up pillows
Rose gardens
Weeping willows
Cups of tea

Quintessential:
Fits as if a three-piece suit
Or ducks plaster cast threefold
In flight across the fire place wall

So what would you take with you
Other than paper, a pen and the sanity
To fetch back from your mind
That which you have already known

That which you know makes
The difference
Between the here and there
Between the then and now

So what
Would you take with you
To make the man:

Checked frocks
Embroidered smocks
Garlands round the maypole

Hand pulled ales
Hills and vales
Strangers resounding

At the clarion call
By the tall trees now in slumber
Somewhere East of Clumber

Deferential
Sticks unpicked
Past glories
Lost & stumbled

The shoddy
Without the shimmer
With thread and pin
Therein to sing

That sometime
The fabric’s time
Not with medals
But with honour
The fabrics time arrives


The pamphlet Rainbows on my Spectacles is available at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/rainbows-on-my-spectacles/id486905289?mt=11

Capture

Cracked earth
Your sign
Of sunshine after rain

Of clay
Close upon your surface
Of winters now far away

Wide grass, wedged between your thumbs
In front of your cupped fingers
Your breath

Without the grass gives a hoot
Or is it an owl
Somewhere in the distance

This moment
I stroke beneath your eyelid, then
Ask that you turn

To face into the sun
Such that the camera
May catch (capture)

More than just the essence
Of the past, or the future
Or your presence

In sepia tone
Or black and white
Or pixel plenty colour


The pamphlet Rainbows on my Spectacles is available at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/rainbows-on-my-spectacles/id486905289?mt=11

Pink white blossom

Crooked vine you have turned
At every turn, yet
You have yearned not of going back

Always instead to reach out, without end
Or fall away
Wither there, to die a quicker death

Curvaceous leaf; your sheaf, your shape
As her neck nape with pleasure gave
Strains of the toughest, twice turned cheek

Always instead to float until way past late
Or drip when clipped
Annotated as a signature, on the vase or cheque

Pink white blossom - you arrive unnoticed
Well dressed
No thanks to the hibernation times

Always instead to spume your fine perfume
Or phrase your dusted past
Onto the pictures of our pastured pavements


The pamphlet Rainbows on my Spectacles is available at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/rainbows-on-my-spectacles/id486905289?mt=11